I have two teenage daughters, which means a good portion of my energy is spent worrying about them. I worry about their safety, their peer group, their social media interactions, but I especially worry about their spiritual well-being–I want them to love and follow Jesus for their whole lives and be spared from the stupid sins and mistakes I made. I realized recently, though, that my worry denies the heart of God toward sinners. I don’t trust that God will be as faithful to my children as he has been to me, despite an abundance of evidence in their lives, in my life, and especially from His word.
The Bible makes abundantly clear God’s posture toward sinners. We see it in stark, unmistakable terms in Romans 5:8. “But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God sent Jesus to save sinners because he loves us. Jesus says as much in Luke 19:10: “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.” This was the purpose of Jesus’s ministry and why he was called the “friend of sinners.”
Notice the phrasing of that verse–Jesus came to seek and save. He doesn’t merely wait for sinners to find him, he seeks us out. When Jesus does this, it is an embodiment of the heart of God. So when we think about our loved ones or neighbors who we yearn to follow Jesus faithfully, we can remember the heart of a seeking, saving God.
I originally wrote this post for my church, Immanuel Nashville, in our Daily Pulse email. If you want encouragement from God’s word delivered Monday thru Friday to your inbox, I encourage you to subscribe.